There's increased demand for batteries as pressure for clean energy sources grows. However, the material used to make them, lithium, is in short supply. Not having it will impact electric vehicles, the technology we use and more. Read about how we're mining for lithium and the environmental cost. Plus, could sodium be another alternative source?
NEWRY, Maine (AP) — The race is on to produce more lithium in the United States. The U.S. will need far more lithium to achieve its clean energy goals — and the industry that mines, extracts and processes the chemical element is poised to grow. But it also faces a host of challenges from …
MELBOURNE, Jan 21 (Reuters) - Lithium is in hot demand due to rapidly growing production of electric vehicles that use lithium-ion batteries, but there is a global supply shortage of the metal, with western countries racing to bring on new mines to compete with China. The Serbian government on …
Lithium is - as the name indicates - the key element of all lithium-ion batteries. As it turns out, this lightest metal is sourced in volume from just …
China dominates the processing of many materials that end up in electric vehicles. Now it is going after mining those resources more aggressively. On …
As the world increasingly swaps fossil fuel power for emissions-free electrification, batteries are becoming a vital storage tool to facilitate the …
Demand for electric vehicles has shifted investments into high gear to extract lithium from geothermal wastewater around California's dying Salton Sea …
Sodium-ion rechargeable batteries could soon be a cheaper and resource-saving alternative to current lithium-ion cells. Powerful prototypes and …
The ability to simulate electrochemical behavior at the quantum scale heralds a new era of battery design. Lithium-ion battery technology is one of …
/https://tf-cmsv2-smithsonianmag-media.s3.amazonaws.com/filer_public/3c/be/3cbe5a70-e164-43cc-9d61-89d3f8b13891/al-anode-mini-device-credit-p-bombelli-580x288px_1.jpg)
Researchers have discovered how to use cyanobacteria—commonly called blue-green algae—to continuously power a microprocessor for a span of more than …
Here’s a thoroughly modern riddle: what links the battery in your smartphone with a dead yak floating down a Tibetan river? The answer is lithium – …
Washington, DC (CNN) — Fewer than 40 years after humans discovered Tiehm's buckwheat, a Nevada plant with yellow flowers, they may drive it to extinction in pursuit of electric vehicles, a technology widely hailed as being environmentally friendly. Environmentalists say the benefits of Tiehm's …
